State of the WAC (Aug. 23, 3:13 p.m.)

You really have to feel for Western Athletic Commissioner Karl Benson.

With his conference crumbling before our very eyes, he singled out Louisiana Tech, which has made no secret of its desire to join Conference USA, as critical to the league’s future last week in a teleconference.

Now, as I linked in my previous entry, there’s speculation brewing (I love that phrase, by the way) that Utah State is working feverishly to renegotiate the Mountain West invitation it not-so-wisely turned down last week.

That’s in addition to the possibility that Hawaii could go independent. Not likely, but still. The fact Hawaii is even considering such a drastic measure tells you all you need to know about the WAC’s prospects right now.

As San Jose Mercury News reporter Jon Wilner explains here, the conference’s fate might actually depend on BYU, which recently left the Mountain West to join the WAC in all other sports in order to go hunting for cash cows as a football independent.

So — drastic understatement here — things are obviously very, very fluid. The conference could survive, and even re-invent itself as some sort of go-between for FCS schools seeking to transition into the big time (see below), or it could implode all together.

With so much up in the air, it seems a little bit silly to make any predictions or projections in relation to UTSA’s future. But because we know that’s what you expect, we’re going to climb out on that limb.

Normal

0

false

false

false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }

/* Style Definitions */

table.MsoNormalTable

{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;

mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;

mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;

mso-style-noshow:yes;

mso-style-parent:””;

mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;

mso-para-margin:0in;

mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;

mso-pagination:widow-orphan;

font-size:10.0pt;

font-family:”Times New Roman”;

mso-ansi-language:#0400;

mso-fareast-language:#0400;

mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

I’m tentatively slate to write about this in more detail in a column for Friday’s paper, but here are

some general thoughts (call it a dress rehearsal for publication):

* If the WAC survives, UTSA and Texas State

are going to get very strong looks as candidates to restore its membership to at least eight schools. In fact, put a gun to my head, I’d

expect they’ll both get invitations, provided Tech remains in the WAC as an Eastern anchor. They leave, and there’s really no point.

* While the conference obviously does I get the

sense Tech might not really care who the WAC adds. In the midst of an

unexpected boom, the Bulldogs are more interested in what’s happening on

their own campus than they are in the conference as a whole.

This much is certain – they’re going to

be leaving at some point. If it doesn’t happen immediately, they’re probably content to bide their time and continue building their infrastructure until they’re attractive enough earn a better offer.

You can

already infer what Tech thinks about UTSA in light of the fact the two schools

already have a two-game series slated for 2015-16. They’ve also played

basketball somewhat recently, the men with a home-and-home series in 2004 (they

split) and the women with a single game in 2005 (they lost).

Here’s a

scenario –

Everybody stays for the time being, the WAC adds a couple of schools to stabilize

itself. UTSA and Texas State, say. Tech

eventually gets its coveted Conference USA invite, or Utah State leaves for wherever, and the conference is right back in the same situation, needing to troll the FCS ranks for replacements.

Obviously not a great situation, especially from a stability standpoint. But for UTSA, it could provide an essential opportunity to builds its infrastructure up to the level it needs to be for this whole endeavor to work.